said Yesugei.
“It isn’t shame, if the feint retreat isn’t shame, and that our most beloved battle tactic.”
“You come back from a feint retreat.”
“When you want to, my neighbour, when you want to. You’re acquainted with the Uighur Turks? They didn’t want to, they had found a life elsewhere, and I defy you to cry shame on the Uighur. Once they lived where I live. The ruins of Black Balghasun on Orqon River are still a grand sight. The famous twelve iron gates – breached by Kirghiz, savages out of the forests north, who destroyed our greatest state, in wealth and intellectual culture greater than the Blue Kingdoms before them. When the first Iron Khan Abaoji, who thought to be a sort of constable on the steppe, chased the Kirghiz out of the ruins, he asked the Idiqut back to resume his days of glory, when he wasn’t an Idiqut but a khaghan right the way from the Khingans to the Altai. Equal monarchs, he suggested, the Iron Khan and the Idiqut, your side of the Khingans and mine, and new glory days across the steppe. But by that time, for a hundred years, Uighur had been custodians of the Tarim oases, the oases that are beyond my description. I haven’t been. But you have heard of the frescoes in the temple caves, the ferment of thought, the creativity in that crossroads of the world. There the Uighur had discovered new arts, new religions, and the Idiqut declined. The steppe, too, declined without them – as I confess, who own the Orqon now, on the east, while Naiman own west of the river and Merqot own the north. None of us are a patch on the Uighur.”
“New religions?” echoed one of the nokod. “Are we to take to our wagons, and take up new religions?”
Toghrul turned a bluff face to him, a face without offence. “No, that you needn’t. The name of Tangr has been known on the steppe for thousands of years and over thousands of miles. Tangr, Tenger, Tangri... Old Uighur, Blue Turk, Hun.”
Since this Hirai from the royal house talked to the nokod, another tried him. “Tangr sent us to live along the three rivers, sent our Father Wolf and Mother Doe on a great trek into the mountains where they spring. You call them the Khentei, but we call them the Sacred.”
“Our bones lie along the Three Gols,” another joined in. “Our shamans’ bones and our shamans’ instruments that make each a sacred site. If we wander off our spirits won’t follow us, and where are we then? At mercy of foreign spirits. There is a spirit in the Sacrosanct Mountain who watches over us. Too ancient to have a known name, but Tangr entrusted us to him. The wolf and doe coupled on his slopes, she cast a child on his slopes, the original Mongol. I cannot leave his sphere. I cannot leave that mountain.”
“Our bones that lie at Bor Nor have only begun to weather. I won’t abandon them til they’re crumbled away.”
“Hear, hear,” came a murmur, more or less unanimous.
Yesugei himself gave assent in a nod. “There you have the answer to your answer, Toghrul. It’s a fair question, why don’t we, but the answer is likely to be adamant.”
“Nor are you wrong.” He addressed this to the circle of them. “I salute your pertinacity.”
The nokod ventured to joke with him. “Is that like tenacity, only pig-headed?”
“A neat definition. Neater than I am in Turk-Mongol crossover-speech – did I mean perseverance?”
Likewise, Yesugei: he gave a different smile from the arsenal, one that warned of a jest ahead. “Our neighbours to the west needn’t worry about a Mongol crossover.”
This was a test of his humour, or of his laugh. Yesugei often said, I know whether I’m going to like you by your laugh. Their neighbour did laugh, from the throat, with a squeeze of the eyes and a gulp at the end. The nokod saw that Yesugei liked him. “I might have been concerned, Yesugei,” he told him with a knobbly hand out. “Except my concerns are up in the air. Suspended, my office, and me expelled from Hirai. Mind, I query the legality of my expulsion. Like Mongols, I find myself strongly inclined to stay put. And if I caught the obstinacy from my mother, God bless her.”
To this information Yesugei said, “I did not know what to title you.”
“You and I can dispense, and my title is insecurely poised. Yet I have one: khan of my people, by anointment, by elevation on a white felt, by acclaim. An uncle of mine disputes me on a legal point and has been to the courts. Here I am with the crown of my grandfather and my father on my head, and I have my sceptre in my bags, and I have a flag. In these lie kingship, or else in my uncle’s hasty court with absentees. – Shall I start at the start?”
“Wet your throat.” Yesugei gestured to his cup and Hoelun leant to pour.
“Thank you, lady. I am the first son of the first son, as such named heir as soon as he had me by my father Kyriakus. Thus I have always been a hostage to fortune. Twice a hostage for my father, and not by his consent. Happily for me, my throat was too valuable an item to cut. First Merqot captured me when I was seven; they put me to grind pigments in a mortar, which one rather enjoys at seven. My father rescued me, an urchin in a spotted goat’s skin with uncleanable fingers. At thirteen Alchi Tartar plucked me from the nest, and my dear mother too; he put me to mind his camels. I struck up with his shepherd, a captive from Tangut, and we made our escape through the desert, where my mother succumbed to a snakebite.
“Ups and downs, then, I am used to; vicissitudes I drink with my daily broth; still, I can’t help but feel I have earnt my crown. My father Kyriakus came unfought into his throne; that is a proud first, and he had the emotion of Marquz’ death behind him. With me we are back to the stoushes. Two of my father’s forty sons, whose names I utter under sign of the cross –” Toghrul touched his brow, his sternum, his right and left shoulder – “Tai Temur and Bull Temur, joined conspiracy against me. I trust their souls are with Yesus Christ, for God forgives; and God forgive me, for I did warrant their deaths who plotted mine. Thereupon my father’s brother Gur convened his court and had me banished: the sentence laid down by Marquz for attempt by a member of the royal family on a fellow member’s life – banishment when there is extenuation found, but the sentence never to be less. That is Gur’s case. How his case stands up I’d like the chance to argue with him; however, because I did not trust his motives, I obeyed, and I took only the hundred of my guard his court allowed me.” Toghrul paused to moisten his throat, but with a finger up that promised more. The nokod hung on, wide-eyed.
“Who did we run into out of Hirai? Toqtoa King of Merqot in Black Gorge. We were in the gorge and he was on the steeps. Bad position, Yesugei. But I knew the way to Toqtoa’s heart. Forest savage though he is, he thirsts for status – a foot into the circle of the steppe kings, who don’t ask him to dinner. I wed my daughter to him. I am sorry but I did. If I hadn’t, she’d have been seized along with our other women over the corpses. This Hujaur knew and she went gamely, as to certain death in battle to save others; God give her reward. Toqtoa, a savage but a social climber, preferred the khan of Hirai’s daughter, bestowed upon him in the right style, albeit at spearpoint, to the khan of Hirai’s head on his spear. He let us pass.”
Through this escapade the nokod noticed the captain’s missus fidget. Perhaps he wasn’t aware of her history, sent to a fate worse than death in Merqot. But she didn’t bring up her history.
Toghrul slapped his knee. “And here I am.”
However, he hadn’t got to why he was here. “A suitor to me,” Yesugei finished for him. “I have to say I’m flattered.”
“Your nokod I had heard of. I meet them now, and they might have to forgive me if I say in front of them, they are known for knights out of the tales. It is them I sue for. I sue for them, for yourself and yours to make up a hundred. In return I have a king’s gratitude on offer, if I am in the upshot a king.”
To this offer, no bad one, they thought, their captain said in query, “You believe we can assist you to your kingship? A hundred of mine?”
“I don’t have a war on, marshal; I have an arrest. My intentions are to arrest my uncle Gur and fight him in court, only properly. And I have counter-charges of treason and of us
urpation, but here in your witness I undertake not to execute. There’s been enough of that. As I say, you have a name in Hirai, and if you lend me support I won’t exude the scent of a strongarms come to wrestle my throne from my uncle, but of a defendant with a strong case in justice. Hence, too, a number for an arrest. Bluntly, you are known an upright man. Now, what you think of me, what you make of my case, there’s another matter. I’m a Turk. I have proved that with my story. In a time of innocence we too changed our kings without violence, but for us that time is distant. You are children in the world. That I mean, Yesugei Baghatur, with no slur, with no disdain.”
“I understand you do. We are a young people. Your story bewilders us, but to be fair, we have had three khans.”
“My grandfather and my father, Marquz and Kyriakus, have tried to revive that time of no argument, no family assassination. It was the whole idea behind their first son initiative. It’s why I was a king in the cradle. I feel obliged to fight for their idea, along with fighting for my arse.”
Here, perhaps because they grinned, Yesugei told him, “Your offer, Toghrul, has my nokod interested. I’d like to discuss with them before I give an answer.”
“Absolutely.”
When he had gone through half a gallon